Printing in color or in black provides great flexibility. However, in some instances, such as a business setting, printing occurs mostly in black. Accordingly, businesses typically have a printer or multifunction machine that is dedicated to black ink. In other examples, a color printer typically will have several colors from which to print process colors and at least one black ink. This black ink is used to print black or also can be used with other process colors. Despite the availability of printing in color, printing in black occurs much more frequently than printing in color. Accordingly, black ink is typically consumed quicker than the color inks.
However, once the printer and its ink supply mechanism is provided to the consumer, the capacity of the black ink supply relative to the capacity of the color ink supply is generally fixed. Accordingly, while a consumer may enjoy the flexibility of printing in color or black, the consumer may be limited in their efficiency of printing in black because of the number of cartridges or ink supply containers that have to be used to achieve high volume printing in black.